


Join Me at the Feast

by neverhaveieverbooks



Category: London Spy
Genre: Cooking, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 21:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6211339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverhaveieverbooks/pseuds/neverhaveieverbooks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Danny and Alex got to know each other during those eight months.  One of the ways Danny knew Alex loved him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Join Me at the Feast

**Author's Note:**

> How Danny and Alex got to know each other, during those eight months. One of the ways Danny knew Alex loved him. Title taken from the song A House of Many Rooms, by Mike and the Mechanics. We write fanfiction and YA LGBTQ fiction, and post on tumblr at neverhaveieverbooks. Please follow us!

The first time Alex cooked for Danny was on a Friday night, about four weeks after they first met. Danny got out of work at seven, texted Alex to see whether they could meet up. He assumed they would meet in a pub, grab a pint and some chips and settle at a corner table, talking. He wasn't sure where the night would go from there. Alex wasn't his usual kind of date.  He proved that by texting Danny back:

 

_Come to my place. I want to make you dinner._

 

No one had made Danny dinner since he was eleven and that had been his mum’s cooking, tinned beans on toast or microwaved pork pies with oven chips.  He almost said no, he was so surprised. Danny wasn't proud of his choices in men, but he was always honest about them, at least to himself.  He didn't date the type of men who cooked.  He thought about Alex, how his voice was clipped and low, his skin taut against the muscles in his legs when he ran. The tremble in his lower lip, visible last weekend, when they were together at Danny's, that first, complicated time. He texted Alex back

 

_On my way._

 

When Alex let him in, he was still wearing his dress trousers, and a fine white cotton dress shirt with the collar open.  He had a canvas apron on, tied at the waist, and a lemon in one hand.

 

“What are you making?”  Danny asked, following him up the stairs and into the kitchen.  He wasn't sure where to stand or what to do with his hands or whether he should sit on the lone stainless steel stool pulled up to the marble-topped bar while Alex was still working. The kitchen at Alex’s flat was as stark as the rest of it.  White designer cupboards topped dark counters and stainless steel appliances with their dull, brushed sheen hummed quietly against the wall. Alex had a bamboo cutting board laid out, with a white paper packet beside it, meat, Danny guessed, or fish of some sort. A garlic bulb and a bunch of fresh parsley lay beside it.

 

Alex bent and pulled a bottle of bitter from under the counter, handing it to Danny, nodding at him to sit.  So Danny sat, and opened the bottle. Alex turned back towards the cutting board in front of him on the  counter and started slicing up the lemon, in wedges.

 

“Plaice with capers and lemon sauce,” he said. “Steamed Asparagus. Treacle tart for pudding.”

 

Danny sat and watched Alex work. Classical music of a sort that Danny didn't recognize streamed from a stylized radio in the corner.  Alex was mostly quiet while he dredged the fish in flour, placed the asparagus spears in a pot with a steaming basket, and pressed  dough into a pie pan.

 

Danny was quiet too, sipping his beer, mesmerized by Alex’s precisely skilled movements. At one point he looked over at Danny watching him, and smiled a bit, moving his lips but saying nothing.

 

The meal was simple, Danny realized as they ate it, but complicated at the same time.

 

Later, his belly full, mouth still lemony-tart and treacle-sweet, Danny told him, “No one’s ever cooked for me before.”  They were on the lounge. Alex had turned off the lights in the room and pulled a soft, fawn-colored throw over both of them.

 

“Do you not cook?” Alex asked, tilting his head back, as if surprised. He was under Danny, had one hand on Danny’s chest, his fingers undoing Danny’s shirt buttons one-by-one.

 

“Naw,” said Danny. “Never learned.  I can fry a proper breakfast.  That’s about it.”

 

Alex reached up, kissed him softly, pulled him a little closer. “I could teach you.”

 

Danny shook his head, no, “Dunno.  I've never done it before.”

 

Alex smiled then, a smile that reached his eyes, a smile Danny didn’t see when they weren't alone, and said, so softly Danny almost couldn't hear him, “Well, it seems fair, then, doesn't it? You taught me something I had never done. Now it's my turn to teach you.”

 

Alex was a good cook, which Danny found surprising for a man who lived alone in a bright but spare flat. He owned gourmet German chefs knives, kept sharpened to a razor’s edge. His meticulously clean kitchen cupboards were filled with non-stick sauté pans and copper-bottomed pots and odd devices which Danny had never seen before.  Alex identified them as a fish scaler, a cherry pitter and a duck press.

 

Danny preferred to watch Alex cook, than learn himself, though. Alex was as thorough and meticulous at the cooker as he was in all the other parts of his life. He spent long minutes at the market on a Saturday morning, choosing fresh herbs and vegetables, looking over every joint in the butcher’s case before choosing.

 

Despite his own immaculate and fully-equipped set-up, Alex seemed to enjoy cooking in Danny’s tiny flat kitchen.  Danny did not know why, due to the mess and the flatmates running about, thoughtlessly leaving dirty dishes in the sink.  Alex carried his chefs’ knives in a leather case, and a couple of heavy pans, which he left in Danny’s room, safe from the flatmates.

 

Alex cooked whatever Danny wanted-- a breakfast fry-up for breakfast, chips if they were hungry late at night, creeping from Danny’s room, sleepy and warm from each other.  But he also loved cooking more elaborate meals, foods Danny had never heard of:  Ratatouille with garlic and tomatoes and aubergine and bouillabaise, a complex fish stew with mussels and clams and fish. Danny ate all of it.

 

Danny asked him where he learned to cook one day

 

Alex’s face took on a far-away look, “Someone at home taught me,” was all he said.

 

Danny, wanting to purge Alex’s lovely face of the sadness, didn't ask more questions.  He pushed Alex up against the doorjamb and kissed his jaw, hard and sudden, pressing against him.  

 

Later, warm, and sated, lying together in Danny’s bed, Alex spoke again, in his slow, measured voice.  “Cooking is just a different way to love someone.”


End file.
